The Conditional Mood of History
by AmZ
Summary: "Society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,- those who attack it and those who guard it." One day, history does likewise with two representatives of these classes. Not part of the "You Know Nothing of Javert" arc but shares in some of its aspects.
1. Prologue

Author's Note: All right. This is my third attempt to get this story off the ground, and I think this time I'm on the right track.

Nominally, this is supposed to be a Les Miserables/Highlander cross-over. However, you don't need to know anything about the Highlander universe to read it. In fact, it might hinder the reading, as you'd be hard-pressed to look for actual Highlander-specific characters in the text. This is basically a Les Miserables fic, with two key twists borrowed from a different fandom: immortality and swords.

I cannot tell a lie. This might turn into another monster along the lines of "Between the Dog and the Wolf." This time, however, the plot will follow the book closely enough to permit far speedier writing.

Here we go.

* * *

**Prologue: On the seashore of endless worlds**

The demonic roar of the approaching motorcycle penetrated the foliage of the surrounding trees and broke through Valjean's slumber. Several heart-pinching seconds later, a familiar symphony of electric hums flooded his body. As always in such moments, Valjean shuddered.

Behind the trees, the unseen motorcycle engine died. Valjean lifted himself up on his elbows and turned his head to watch the rider park his machine. To his surprise he spied two men instead of one: a tall and lanky figure draped head-to-toe in black shook hands energetically with a similarly tall and lanky figure in jeans and a grey shirt. A second later Jeans-and-T-shirt was running across the rails towards the distant platform, adjusting his massive hiking backpack as he ran.

Valjean lay back down onto the brittle grass. Half a minute later, a familiarly hoarse baritone growled above his head: "Tschuldigung, ist hier noch frei?"

Eyes tightly closed against the blinding sun, Valjean smiled.

"I'll take it as 'yes'," said Javert and sat down next to him.

Valjean opened his eyes and looked at his friend. "You look... frightfully hot," he said with concern.

Javert's leather outfit, entirely black except for the shiny criss-crossing zippers, covered everything except his face and a narrow sliver of dark neck.

"Ugh. I swear, this is not a loaner from a sex shop," grumbled Javert as he pulled off his gloves and undid the top button of his high collar. "This is local motorcycling gear, if you'll believe it."

Valjean believed it: two similarly attired fellows were visible in line for ice-cream at the Imbiss by the parking lot, conspicuous among bikinis, Hawaiian shirts and bright swimming trunks.

Javert lay down on his back and pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead, squinting and rubbing the sweat out of his eyes. "Usually, I would not mind, but on a day like this, this get-up is murderous. As soon as you drop the speed below forty, you start feeling like a lobster steaming in his shell."

"So change," suggested Valjean.

"Shan't."

"Why?"

"Can't take the risk of the trousers shrinking from the heat by the time I have to climb back into them."

"Who was that chap on your bike?"

"Just someone I picked up ten kilometers out of Freiburg. His rental car broke down, and he had a train to catch. I decided to be nice for a change."

Javert's German, Valjean noted, had decidedly changed since he'd heard it last about a decade ago. Javert liked to imbue his non-native European languages with various Asian accents, and now his German also sounded vaguely flavored.

"Are you supposed to be Turkish now?" asked Valjean, switching to French.

Javert shrugged. "Just blending in," he answered, also in French. "Around here, lots of fellows that look like me sound like this."

He turned over onto his side. Stretched out to its full impressive length on the sun-drenched lakeside saturated with summer colors, his body looked somewhat surreal, like a black silhouette.

"So!" He grinned a large carnivorous grin. "Did you miss me, old man?"

"Yes," said Valjean simply. "Ten months is a long time."

The grin disappeared. "I wish I could tell you it'll get better," said Javert. "But it doesn't look like it. You know yourself how bad things are these days. With train stations going up in smoke all over Europe, vacation time around our department has become a mythical entity. Like the monstrous squid, or Baba Yaga."

Javert leaned in close to Valjean on his elbows.

"Why won't you just come and live with me?" he asked quietly and sadly. "To do what you do in this day and age, what do you need besides a computer and wireless internet? An architect's table? We'll buy you one. Some software? I'll find you any kind you want. I've got a whole room you can take for an office. What's keeping you in Ireland? Have you got a girlfriend there?"

"No, no girlfriend."

"Boyfriend? Sheep friend?"

"I had a company there, you ass. Your loyalties are to Interpol; mine are to free enterprise."

Javert shifted onto his elbows. "Wait," he asked, taken aback. "What do you mean, '_had _a company'?"

Valjean sighed.

"It was going to be a surprise, but since you caught me: I sold my share in it last month."

"Does this mean you're leaving?" Javert's voice trembled slightly with excitement.

"Yes."

"Where will you go?"

"To Berlin, if you want me there."

A huge toothy smile bloomed on Javert's face.

"Damn straight I want you there!" he exclaimed. "I've got at least twenty solid years left in Berlin. Maybe twenty-five, if I work hard at it. I'm 'thirty' now. I can make it to 'fifty.' And maybe even fifty-five."

"Fifty-five would probably be pushing your luck."

"I wouldn't be so sure. They say fifty is the new forty. Who knows? In a few decades, fifty-five might be the new forty."

"Any slip-ups at work?"

"Not yet. I've been lucky in the field. And I'm keeping myself well away from sharp objects in the office. So right now, it's just the expected: 'Still no partner?' and 'Would you like for me to set you up with someone nice?' Very age-appropriate. None of the other stuff yet."

Valjean sighed. The 'other stuff' was why he was now leaving a company into which he had invested decades. Five years ago, he could still laugh it off. "How do you stay in such great shape, John? Fifty-seven, and you look twenty years younger!" One could joke about the benefits of cold beer and hot yoga. But now the compliments have given way to bemused side glances and rumor-mill nonsense about stem cells and gene therapy. It was time to move on. Berlin beckoned.

"Will people react well to your living with a man?" Valjean asked.

Javert snorted. "I should think so. Right now those same people think I've got a different man over every night."

"Playing up the wild youth card?"

Javert stretched and pushed his sunglasses back over his eyes. "Let's just say that this time, I left myself plenty of room to grow."

Out in the water, children and teenagers splashed about in the blindingly sparkling water with squeals of wild joy.


	2. Chapter 1

_"In the tenth year his turn came round again; he again profited by it; he succeeded no better." - _**Les Misérables** _by Victor Hugo. _Volume 1, Book Second, Chapter 6

* * *

**Chapter 1  
**

"Alive! I want him taken alive!" wheezed Thierry behind him. Hearing this, Xavier slowed down and unfastened the cudgel from his belt with eager fingers. Now relieved of five pounds of dead swinging weight, it was a matter of seconds for him to overtake the rest of the pursuing party.

The prisoner had discarded his red jacket somewhere on the way and was now clothed, apparently, in brown and gray: even Xavier's keen eyes had trouble spotting him on the winding path along the cliff-side.

'How the hell did he get out of the city?' wondered Xavier as he watched the escaping prisoner leap over yet another boulder. 'And where the hell did he procure the civilian garb? That sneaky fox. Let's see if he's as fast as he is clever.'

Both the underfed milksop sergeants and the overweight lieutenant had long fallen behind, and Xavier's hope for aid from a mounted city guard was dwindling fast. Truth be told, the prisoner was already beyond the point where he could be apprehended by a horseman: some time ago, the last passable trail turned left where the prisoner turned right. There was nothing but rock around them now, and a merrily sparkling sea below. And yet number 24601 showed no sign of fatigue, even after a quarter hour's hot pursuit.

Xavier watched with some envy as the convict leaped boldly and precisely from stone to cliff and back and legged it hard whenever a stretch of half-overgrown trail presented itself. For a man who had spent the last ten years on a diet of prison beans, he seemed to be in fantastically good health. 'Well, what of it,' thought Xavier. 'I've got youth on my side, and longer legs besides.'

"Hey!" yelled Xavier out after the man, hoping to distract him. "Hope you're not too winded, because I'm right behind you!"

The prisoner paid him no mind and, with the final leap, disappeared from view.

'He aims to climb down to the water,' realized Xavier. 'After the smooth prison wall, forty feet of uneven rock will be a stroll in the park. And if he gets to the sea, I've lost him for good – he swims like a fish, and there has been no boat sent out from the docks after him.'

By the time Xavier recovered sight of his prey, the distance between them was already immeasurable: Number 24601 was suspended off a stone shelf about twenty feet from where his hapless pursuer slouched on the rocks panting.

"Get back up here this minute, What's-your-name!" barked Xavier as soon as he had breath enough to spare.

The convict did not reply. He was concentrating on feeling a rock cautiously with his right foot.

"I will climb down after you!"

The man raised his head and gave Xavier's awkwardly tall and angular figure a brief appraising look. Then he went back to examining the rock shelf.

"I'm warning you, I will do it!" reiterated Xavier, mentally gauging the height of the cliff and dismissing it immediately as too terrifying to ponder.

The prisoner did not answer but instead descended another couple of feet. Realizing that further delay was impossible, Xavier took a deep breath, muttered a quick prayer, and cautiously swung his leg over the edge of the cliff.

"What are you doing?" suddenly sounded the convict's voice behind him.

"Contemplating the beauty of creation," snarled Xavier, bidding his trembling calves to quit shaking. "For the last time, come back up here, or I'll come down, and then both of us will suffer!"

"Don't be stupid, I'm-warning-you. You'll never make it. I'm barely making it, and I'm a good climber. You're still an overgrown puppy, I'm-warning-you. You couldn't find your feet in broad daylight with a lamp."

"Call me that idiotic nickname one more time, and I'll..."

Xavier's words were lost along with his balance. Barely recovering, the young man clung desperately to a rocky protrusion, averting his gaze hurriedly from the frothy waves lapping at the rocks far below his precarious perch. Blood pounded in his ears.

"What's so idiotic about 'I'm-warning-you'?" asked the convict teasingly. "Fine name for you. Well-deserved."

"You are going to get it _good_ from me, you lousy whore-son," growled Xavier, advancing slowly towards the prisoner, bits of chalky limestone crumbling under his hobnailed boots. "I'm coming for you."

"You're not coming for me very fast," remarked the convict. "For each step you make, I make two further away and down."

"I'll follow. The rock will end eventually."

"Will you swim after me as well?"

"I will!"

"Didn't know you could swim, I'm-warning-you."

"There's a lot you don't know about me, shit-britches." Xavier's fingers were cramping up with the effort of clinging to the slippery rock.

"And suppose I hurl a rock at you?" asked the convict, picking up a pebble from a rock shelf. "The limestone is slimy. It wouldn't take much to knock you off it."

"You wouldn't risk unbalancing yourself."

Immediately, a limestone pocket about a foot from his right hand shattered.

"The next rock will break your nose," warned the convict.

"Go on, then, throw," said Xavier. "Who knows, it might improve my looks. My nose is not exactly pretty."

No more than seven feet separated them now: Xavier was still several good handholds away from the convict's shelf, but the man was no longer moving. Now he was just watching Xavier's progress with alarm in his eyes.

"Child, be reasonable!" The convict's voice was suddenly pleading. "You'll never make it. The rock gets too steep where I am. I don't want you dead! I just want to be out of the damn chains!"

"We all sometimes want things we can't have," panted Xavier as he inched sideways. "I want things too. Strange things, sometimes. Impossible things, even. It passes. It'll pass for you, too. Give it three years or so. If you actively resist me, five."

"No! Don't come down anymore! I'll go back with you!"

But it was too late. Xavier stepped down. Immediately, his right foothold gave way. For a few interminable moments, the free fingers of his right hand clawed desperately at the rock surface for a protrusion, a crack, anything - to no avail. He slid down hard, smashing his chin, and clung reflexively to the rock that mangled him. But his strength lasted only long enough to see the convict lunge after him, eyes wide with terror and arm stretched out, and then the blood loosened his grip.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Jean Valjean awoke to blinding sunlight and the fires of hell burning in his chest. He opened his mouth to scream, and a torrent of air rushed into his lungs, almost bursting him open. Overcome with agony, Valjean choked, rolled onto his side and began to cough violently, thrashing on the jagged rocks.

When the fit passed and he could once more breathe, Valjean attempted to gain his knees. Even this simple action took almost inhuman effort: all the muscles in his body were frozen with numbness and would not obey. The infamous "jack" of Toulon was as helpless as a newborn.

Eventually, he was able to raise himself up on his hands. Still half-dazed and barely able to move, with a deep ache in his chest, he looked around.

On the rocks before him lay a body.

"Hey," called out Valjean, barely able to move his tongue through the cotton in his mouth. "Hey, you…"

Heedless of the sharp rocks, he crawled forward, scraping his arms. "Are you alive?" he called our hoarsely. "Say something!"

But he could see now that it was a futile hope: the back of Xavier's head had been smashed against the edge of a boulder. Blood seeped from a deep crimson cut on his chin. His half-closed gray eyes looked up at the sky with a slight frown, as if in disapproval of what the Heavens did to him.

Valjean put his ear to the young man's chest. At first he thought he heard a heartbeat; then he realized it was only blood pounding in his own ears. Xavier was dead.

For a short while, Valjean did nothing but sat there and stared. Then he gathered the body into his arms and carried him towards the cliff, away from the breaking waves. There he laid it out again on the ground, straightening the broken limbs and arranging the head the best he could on a tuft of dry grass.

Xavier had been liked by the galley-slaves. He was not kind, - not for nothing did they call him "I'm-warning-you" - but there was not a shred of cruelty in him. Never letting an infraction of rules go unpunished, neither did he allow the prisoners to suffer on his watch unjustly. At the 'sign-in' that followed the arrival of each chain-gang, the old hands fought tooth and nail to have their possessions inventoried by "I'm-warning-you," and even used spaces in his line as bets in dice and card games. Everyone knew that whatever you handed to Xavier when you walked into Toulon, you would get back at the end of your sentence, not a sou of it missing. Other guards usually offered the 'new meat' trades – a pound of stale tea leaves for a waistcoat, five plugs of tobacco for leather boots. The worst of them simply declared this or that article of clothing or trinket 'contraband' and confiscated it from the meager possessions prisoners brought in with them. Valjean had seen many men come and go from Toulon, and not one of them had stories of a single occasion when Xavier stole from a prisoner.

He had been at the galleys since he was a boy. Valjean dimly recalled back to the time when he was still attached to the armory, a barefooted, nimble, and mostly silent youth dressed in motley rags. Around seventeen or eighteen years of age, he became a guard.

The prisoners watched him with almost paternal eyes.

"A field-marshal in the making," said some of Valjean's dreamier comrades.

"A fool," said the cynical types. "The ones that won't bend none get broken first. He'll never make a good living if he don't learn how to hustle."

"A patsy," said the old hands. "His father was in Brest four times before the Baker got him. Now there was a clever old fox! Sonny boy has none of his _raisiné dans les vermichels*._"

The prison _tantes_ thought him handsome and constantly made lascivious fun of him.

Valjean himself, prone as he was to peculiar day-dreams, occasionally imagined with naive callousness that Xavier was not a human being but simply the biggest of the prison mastiffs. They were also nice enough to look at, and some of them even allowed themselves to be petted, but what were they except living mechanisms of surveillance and restraint? Xavier seemed likewise to exist entirely in his duties. No one had ever heard him speak of drinking, or fighting, or girls - anything that other young sergeants and_ adjutants garde-chiourme _spent their evenings on. When his shift ended, Xavier retreated somewhere, - presumably to the barracks, _- _and reappeared promptly at the start of his next shift. No one had ever smelled alcohol on his breath. He had never been seen with a sweetheart. He rarely went out into the town. At twenty-six he had the habits of a man twice his age. Occasionally, someone would claim they had spotted him on a bench in the park with a book, or convicts coming back from the port would notice him on the beach, sitting on the sand with his arms over his knees and watching the waves break. That was all._  
_

Now Valjean stood by the young man's side, and all was turmoil in his head. He felt himself split into two halves. Half of him yearned to rush into the sea and swim to freedom; the other half ordered him to his knees. After a few long seconds, Valjean knelt to pray.

As he had never learned the proper orisons for such an occasion, he attempted to improvise his own. But the right words would not come. Instead, Valjean found himself suffused and suffocated with ever-rising rage: at himself for running, at Xavier for chasing him, at all the other guards for falling behind, at the prison turnkey for being foolish and letting him out the gates, at his cellmates for being helpful, at life for being cruel, and at God for being indifferent.

"Why did you have to run after me?" asked Valjean of the body. "Why couldn't you just let me be?"

As if in response to his query, Xavier's eyes flew suddenly open.

"Alive!" cried out Valjean. "You're alive!"

He grasped Xavier by the shoulders to lift him into his lap. As he did so, blood ran cold in his veins.

There was no longer a cut on Xavier's chin.

Dazed, Valjean put forth his hand and cautiously passed his fingers through the young man's hair, feeling his skull in the back. The bone was smooth and unbroken; the skin over it was also intact.

"What is this?" murmured Valjean, staring at the dirt where Xavier's head lay. The dirt was black with blood. "What is this?" he repeated.

The body which not a minute before had been lifeless, stared at him with terror in the wide gray eyes. Then Xavier's chest began to bow upwards, as if someone invisible had wrapped his arms around the young man and was pulling him heavenward. Xavier's hands clenched and dug into the earth; his legs bent at the knees.

Valjean shied away violently, pressing his back against the rock like a cornered cat.

A strange creak escaped the young man's half-open mouth, and then a torrent of air rushed into his chest, pushing him back to the ground. Overcome with agony, Xavier choked, rolled onto his side, and began to cough violently, thrashing on the hard compact earth.

* * *

*_Raisiné dans les vermichels - _fig., "blood in the veins," i.e. stoutness, clout, verve._  
_


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

When the burn in his chest finally subsided from hellish to simply painful, Xavier caught his breath and rolled onto his back. He was light-headed, and there was a frightful ringing in his ears. All in all, he felt rather like he did that one day a few years ago when he dove overboard a ship, because it struck his adolescent fancy to bring up a rock from the bottom of the ocean.

Had he done something that stupid again?

"What are you?" someone cried suddenly.

Still unable to rise, Xavier turned his head to the left.

A powerfully built man with a shaved head and a bristling beard sat under the cliffs in a crouch and watched him with terrified eyes. In his hands the man held a large stone.

"Good day," said Xavier, considering the stone warily. "Who are you?"

"Valjean," said the man in a hollow voice. He seemed stupefied.

"Your health, Valjean."

Xavier rolled onto his stomach and gained his knees. The man pressed tighter into the rocks and raised the stone to his chest, as though to shield his heart with it.

"Are you Lucifer?" said the man. "Answer!"

"Not as far as I know," responded Xavier as he rose with a grunt and looked around. They were in a tiny bay, with high cliffs rising all around them.

"How did I come to be here?" he muttered. His gaze wandered over the cliffs and finally came to rest again on the man, who sat and trembled visibly several paces away. "I remember nothing," complained Xavier. "Did I come down here from these rocks?"

The man stared at him, then gave a single powerful nod.

Xavier raised his eyebrows. "I am evidently an idiot."

"What are you?" moaned Valjean again, his voice barely audible above the sound of the breaking waves.

"I think we are doing this backwards," said Xavier. "You are supposed to ask me things before I answer them, not after."

He took a step towards the cliffs. The man shied away and pressed his back into the rock, shaking his head and shifting the stone to his right hand as if to hurl it. Xavier stopped.

"Please, monsieur," he said, raising his hands. "Tell me something. Anything. I feel very strange. My head is as empty as clay jug. Who are you?"

The man began to mumble under his breath - a prayer, Xavier realized.

Nothing was making sense.

"What are we doing here?" Xavier was growing agitated as he looked around. "And what is this?"

Crouching, he took a pinch of sandy earth his boot had upturned and brought it to his face, smelling it and rubbing it together between his fingertips. "Pardieu! but this is blood!" he exclaimed. "Are you hurt, monsieur?"

"Hurt! Hurt!" cried out the man like an alarmed bird.

Xavier straightened up and stepped towards him once more.

"Stay calm," he ordered. "Let me see the wound."

"Keep away!"

"This is a lot of blood. You must be bandaged! We can use my shirt for linen."

"You keep away!" The man hefted the stone in the air but his arms trembled.

Xavier looked at him, then looked out towards the water and shrugged. "Have it your way. If you will not let me aid you, then I will have to swim to the docks for help. I can't guarantee you will live to see me return."

And he began to walk back into the water. Suddenly, he felt a violent shove to the back and fell headfirst into the sea.

"Are you insane?" he roared as he came up sputtering and staggering in the waist-deep water.

"You are supposed to be dead!"

The man had jumped in after him and was shaking him violently by the collar. "Dead!"

"Oh, am I? am I?" snarled Xavier. "Well! You did a poor job of killing me!"

Tearing out of the man's grasp, he folded his hands together and dove forwards, kicking hard. As he swam away, he heard the man shout behind him:

"…rocks! I told you to stop but you kept going, and you fell!"

Xavier stopped and turned around, treading water. The man, now empty-handed, stood up to his chest in the sea. He still looked deranged, and now he was also wet.

"What?" shouted back Xavier.

"You fell! You fell down here from that cliff!"

"You're mad," cried Xavier. "How long have you been down here? You've got sun-stroke! Go back under the cliffs. Sit in the shade. I will bring help."

"It's the truth!" shouted the man. "You fell! That is how you came to be down here. Your leg was broken, and your head was smashed in! I am not the one injured! All that blood on the ground? That is your blood!"

Trying to keep himself from panicking, Xavier took quick stock of his body. Nothing seemed to be out of order. He inhaled to keep himself afloat and raised his hand to his head. There was no blood on it, and he could feel no hurt from any cut in the scalp.

He bobbed back to the surface, sputtering. "You're talking nonsense!" he rasped. "My leg is fine. And there is no blood on my head."

"Of course there isn't now!" exclaimed the man, "you washed it off!"

"So the water here washes away wounds?" panted Xavier. Carrying on a discussion while swimming was proving challenging. "Marvelous! let us open a spa!"

The man stilled, then began to frantically undress. When the last of his rags were off, he trod back out onto the shore, dropped his garb on the gravel and began turning this way and that under Xavier's unsettled gaze. "See? I've got no wound! It was you! Your blood!" He sat down onto his rags, clutching at his head and rocking back and forth.

Xavier was vexed. Nothing made sense. He was not wounded. Neither was the man. And yet there was all this blood. Had there been a third person there? If so, they were probably no longer a person but only a body, judging by the quantity of blood. A crime must have been committed.

A crime. As if mesmerized, Xavier stared at the sunlight gleaming over the ripples on the water. Crime…

Crime. The _bagne. _The break-out.

Valjean.

The chase along the cliffs.

The climb.

The fall.

The impact, knocking the wind out of him. The waves of pain as the sun turned blood-red in the sky and day became night...

...and then, a painful awakening in a tiny bay, and the fearsome "Jack" of the second ward cowering from him with a stone clutched to his chest and babbling impossible things. Was Valjean mad? He had shown no signs of madness in prison. Moroseness, yes. Shyness also. And monstrous power, thought Xavier with some envy looking at the man's naked sea-washed form.

His musings were interrupted by shouts and whistles carrying faintly over the waves. A boat with three soldiers was making its way towards him. Another boat followed close by. It was the search party.

Following a strange impulse, Xavier swam towards the beach. Climbing out of the water, he sat next to Valjean, as though the two of them were chums out for a leisurely swim.

"The boats are here," he said needlessly.

Valjean said nothing. The soldiers were already taking preemptive aim at him - at both of them, rather.

"Do not resist," advised Xavier, careful to keep his eyes on the soldiers in the boats and off Valjean's bare flesh. "It will only make things worse for you."

"So you remember again," murmured Valjean.

Xavier nodded slightly. "The blood reminded me."

The boats drew ever closer. Three of the soldiers in them had their hands on their saber hilts.

"I know what you are," said Valjean quietly. "You are a sorceror. Everyone says so, but I thought it was lies, malicious gossip."

"It is indeed lies and gossip. I am nothing of the sort."

"So how did you survive the fall?"

Xavier gave him an opaque look.

"How did _you_?"

The first boat hit the rocks with a dull thud.


	5. Chapter 4

The newly minted mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer Madeleine and the town's only inspector Javert successfully navigated their town's winding streets around each other for almost a year before they could no longer avoid being introduced.

The inevitable happened at an evening party given by Mme G_, the wife of the district attorney. The clever woman defeated the new mayor's shyness by extending the invitation to him in person, and she secured the attendance of the inspector through her husband. Why she required the inspector at the party, she would not say, and Monsieur G_ dared not ask; however, instinct told him that it would be unwise to refuse consent to the presence in his house of a man known to have the ear of the Prefect of Police in Paris. And besides, he half-suspected that his wife, like many other ladies of Montreul-sur-mer, was intrigued by the inspector for no other reason than his absolute lack of interest in her.

The party gathered together also the town's two bankers, its few journalists, a passing playwright from Lyon, the head of surgery from the local Hotel Dieu, a few local landowners, and several other pillars of the community. Most of them came from the theatre, which that evening offered the same fateful parody of _The Danaides_ that Duc de Berry attended the night of his assassination. All were dressed in the best outfits that the season's catalogs and clever tailors could furnish.

The inveterate card-players, including the town's cure, immediately sat themselves down to whist, leaving their beribboned and bejeweled companions to hover aimlessly behind their chairs, peaking into their husbands' cards and silently comparing outfits. Others loitered around the _salon,_ nibbled sandwiches and cold meats, drank superb English tea served to them personally by the charming hostess, and repeated to each other with laughter the more memorable lines from the evening's entertainment. In the corner, a string quartet abused soundly the memory and legacy of Haydn. And near the table farthest away from the fireplace, and therefore from other guests, a tall man dressed entirely in black save for his blindingly white shirt and cravat conversed with a much shorter and portlier gentleman outfitted in a bright cornflower-blue coat. They were Javert, the town inspector, and Godard, the head chemist of the dispensary. Godard chattered like a bird at sunrise; Javert nodded along and inhaled goat-cheese and cucumber sandwiches.

"Easy there, _mon vieux,_" finally chided Godard, watching yet another one of Mme G_'s meticulously crafted creations vanish into his interlocutor's silent but tireless mouth. "You'll overtax your digestion."

"It's been a long day since breakfast," parried Javert upon swallowing the last bite.

"You cannot live out your life eating like a Mussulman during the fast of Ramadan," remarked Godard. "I strongly suggest, as a man of medicine, that you use the hour given to you for luncheon to actually _eat_. Well? Why are you silent?"

"I am simply pondering," said Javert, casually daubing his mouth with a handkerchief, "whether Article I of the law of 19th Ventôse, year XI, permits you to make suggestions in that capacity."

"Well, you are welcome to denounce me to the authorities in Rouen for infringement!" declared Godard, sticking his thumbs behind his suspenders. "I may not have a medical diploma, but unlike some present here, I do have a heart, Monsieur!"

"Oh, leave it already." Javert's hand described a dismissive arc in the air, then snagged another sandwich off the large plate on the table. "Father Cornet already admonished me for gluttony tonight, and here you are advising me another daily meal."

"Let the old hog snort and squeal to his heart's content," said Godard rudely. "Look at how fat he is himself, the old hypocrite. What gall! And why shouldn't you eat? You work long days and are paid next to nothing. Besides, some constitutions require only a little food, and some a lot. There is nothing to be done about it. With a figure like yours, it's no wonder you're always hungry."

The inspector was indeed an uncommonly tall specimen, though there was rather less flesh on him than his frame seemed to be outfitted to carry.

"I am not always hungry," countered Javert. "I am only lately hungry."

"That is true," agreed Godard. "Only since that unpleasant business with Lemont. To be honest, I've never known a donkey's kick to have such an effect on anyone. I cannot puzzle it out."

"I would not lay all the blame at Lemont's door," said Javert evasively. "I do get like this from time to time, even when I am not kicked in the stomach by donkeys."

"You are fantastically hardy," observed Godard. "Any other man would have had his viscera crushed."

"Hardy, perhaps. Lucky, definitely."

"Luck has a tendency to run out when you least expect it," said Godard mysteriously. "You ought to provision for the future."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"You did not need a nursemaid on this occasion, but who knows what tomorrow might bring? Surely you would not want to be laid out helpless and alone in your cold little room, without anyone to even hand you a drink of water?"

"I could always go to the hospital," said Javert, who still understood nothing.

"And catch your death there! No, no, my friend, the solution lies elsewhere."

"Oh?"

"Mademoiselle Rouault," said Godard, tapping himself on the nose, "has lately been heard asking about you."

Javert twitched visibly. "I am hardly a good prospect, for her or anyone else. There is no magisterial post in my future. Who would be tempted in earnest by a husband with six hundred francs a year and no prospect of pension?"

"There are also plenty of well-endowed widows about," said Godard.

Now Javert looked genuinely horrified.

"Think about it!" insisted Godard. "There are valuable assets to your person, even without property and high income."

"Or a family history, or any degree of gallantry," remarked Javert sarcastically.

"You overestimate their importance. You are not in Paris any longer; you are in Montreuil-sur-mer. People here marry without unhealthy expectations of social advancement through their spouses. And as for gallantry, it heralds too often inconstancy. So why should you not marry? You have a steady position and a fine figure; you are not a drunk, a lecher, or a profligate. That is enough to make you an excellent prospect for some brisk widow. How old are you?"

"Too old to be thinking of such nonsense."

"You? a young blade like you? You're barely out of short pants!"

Javert cocked a single black eyebrow.

"Godard, last time I wore short pants, the world did not yet know of _sans-culotte_s."

"You jest, surely?" frowned Godard.

"Not in the least. I am forty as of last month."

"Impossible! forty?"

"Indeed."

"Well!.." Godard looked the man over with new, if slightly puzzled appreciation. "That is something. I thought you were one of the younger cohort of veterans. You haven't even a touch of gray!"

Javert shrugged. "I'm sure it'll get there in due time. Some people gray later than others. Look at our Mayor - how much gray does he have, a man of five and a half decades?"

Godard waved dismissively in the Mayor's direction. "As if he were the first vain old man to color his hair. Yours, I can tell, is a natural black. Well then - all the more reason to marry soon. Who knows how long until your fountain of youth runs dry? No, the trouble is not that you are not marriageable; it's that you are not offering yourself for marriage."

Javert rolled his eyes. "You have convinced me. At the next fair, I shall rent a stall next to the pumpkin-farmers and strike poses in my underclothes to the delight of all the brisk widows of Calais."

"An advertisement with the Bureau des Marriages would do the trick just as well," said Godard evenly.

Javert shook his head. The end of his queue whipped about his temples.

"You are mad. I, marry! It's preposterous. Who would want to be married to me? Half the town thinks I'm a blackguard!"

"And the other half thinks you are a man of courage and principles. Don't carry on as though you were a pariah. You are not a man of rank, but what of it? Neither am I, and I married happily. To appropriate the language of Mr. Smith, honorable men of the citizen class are in more demand than supply."

Javert hid his grimace of discontent by eating another sandwich. Taking his silence for a concession of defeat, Godard immediately changed the subject.

"So, how have you been finding this little party?"

"Well, let me see." Javert swallowed and skewed his eyes towards the ceiling. "To begin with, five astonishingly similar remarks have been made to me about my outfit. Apparently, it makes me look very English. I did not know this, but now I have been enlightened to the fact. What they all meant by it remains a mystery. Then one very young and very silly female asked me if I had had many men guillotined in Toulon. And another young and silly female asked me – in jest, one hopes, - whether my crosses are 'legal'. I would not mind so much, but she is the niece of our Attorney General, and one wonders if this was a sanctioned sortie."

"I doubt it. Everyone knows you won those crosses in Russia, not during the Hundred Days."

"Not everyone, apparently."

"Well, it is your own fault for shunning society so persistently. It is through your obstinate silence that rumors and misconceptions abound. You and that new mayor of ours are birds of a feather, honestly."

Javert shot a quick glance at something behind Godard's back. Perceiving it, Godard turned around and saw the man in question on the opposite side of the _salon_. The mayor stood by the edge of the enormous fireplace, holding in his hand a plate from which he was not eating, and stared into the glowing red embers as though mesmerized.


	6. Chapter 5

Author's Note: A short chapter, to tide over the impatient.

* * *

"He stands alone, eats not, and watches the fire," observed Godard as though Javert were blind. "What do you make of him?"

"He puzzles me," confessed Javert.

"Is that your opinion or the opinion of the police?"

"In this two-horse town, I _am_ the police. Were there anybody competent to relieve me, I wouldn't be on my feet for eighteen hours a day and stuffing my face like a chipmunk in the evenings."

"You don't get my meaning. Are you puzzled by him as a man or as a functionary?"

Godard's tone had turned sly. Noticing this, Javert looked at him closely, and Godard saw his own round figure reflect obliquely in the metal-gray irises.

"You're right," finally said Javert, "I don't get your meaning."

Godard tsked impatiently. "Oh, come now! Do you never allow yourself to think anything not sanctioned _a priori_ by your superiors?"

"Whatever I think, I think as both a person and a functionary. One does not cease to be an agent of public order just because one is off duty."

"Is public order not determined by the magistrates?"

"It is determined by law. It is interpreted by magistrates."

"And if the magistrates' opinions on what is beneficial and what is deleterious to public order diverge from your own?"

"What of it?" shrugged Javert. "I'm an old soldier. It's not in my nature to buck the command."

Godard lifted a stubby index finger to the chandelier overhead. "So, if the magistrates hold the opinion that Madeleine is deserving of every kind of promotion, and you hold the opinion that he 'puzzles you,' are you not in conflict with your superiors?"

"Of course not," said Javert smoothly. "My superiors employ me to be suspicious on their behalf. I do not intend to disobey Madeleine simply because he puzzles me, after all."

"But what if he begins issuing orders to you that you will find personally repugnant?"

Javert lowered his eyes and was silent for a while. "I hope it does not come to that."

"What if it will?" pressed Godard.

Javert gave another, smaller shrug. "Then I would resign."

"A fine way out of a dilemma."

"What will you have me do? Retain my position and continue drawing a salary while either committing unjust acts out of slavish obedience or secretly pursuing my own aims? Such thinking forms the first rung on a ladder to corruption."

"Whatever happened to not bucking the command?" teased Godard.

"I am no longer in the army. My employment is a matter of voluntary contract, and I am free to exercise protest by tendering my resignation." Javert took a sip of his tea. "Of course, there are alternative outcomes."

"Oh?"

"You assume that Madeleine puzzles me only because I'm easily puzzled."

Godard's small brown eyes glimmered with excitement. But Javert had already realized he was forgetting himself. "Enough about this," he said. "I will not speculate in public about my superior. It isn't proper."

Somewhat piqued, Godard considered the lonesome figure of the mayor again and suddenly burst forth with a proposition:

"Let's go talk to him!"

Javert shuddered.

"What? Us?" he said, as though Godard had suggested something grossly indecent and anatomically challenging.

"Who else? Someone has to make the fellow feel welcome at his own party. He does not seem comfortable speaking with the ladies, and he isn't gambling with the gentlemen, so who does that leave?"

"Oh! sure! Who indeed?" Javert's voice gave a slight crack.

"Don't be difficult. You'll have to speak with him eventually," said Godard reasonably. "He is your superior now, remember?"

Javert winced. Sensing victory, Godard grabbed him by the elbow and forged ahead.


End file.
